Who Killed Zia? Barbara Crossette
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REFLECTI•NS Barbara Crossette was the New York Times bureau chief in South Asia from 1988 to 1991. Who Killed Zia? Barbara Crossette Of all the violent political deaths in the had seized power in 1977 after ousting twentieth century, none with such great in- Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in a terest to the United States has been more nonviolent coup. He later had Bhutto tried clouded than the mysterious air crash that and hanged for a political murder in a con- killed President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq troversial trial. He had been Bhutto’s own of Pakistan in 1988, a tragedy that also choice for army chief of staff. claimed the life of a serving American am- Zia, who began his military career in bassador and most of General Zia’s top com- the British Army in India in 1943 and manders. The list of potential malefactors moved to Pakistan after the partition of has grown as the years have passed, com- colonial India at independence in 1947, re- pounding the mysteries buried in this pecu- mained head of the Pakistani military and liar, unfinished tale. president until his death. Although he had The one unarguable fact is that no seri- toyed on and off with the idea of an elected ous, conclusive, or even comprehensive in- legislature, he kept the country under mar- quiry into the crash has been undertaken in tial law for 8 of his 11 years in power. the United States, although one of its top General Zia had ambitious hopes of diplomats, Arnold Raphel, and an American arming Pakistan with the most sophisti- general were killed—and in an American- cated American tools: advanced F-16 fighter built aircraft. Congress held a few hearings, planes, AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, and but the FBI was kept away from the case for field equipment to match or better India’s a year. No official report was made public. largely Soviet-supplied arsenal. He also pro- Indeed, a file in the National Archives con- moted the development of nuclear weapons, taining about 250 pages of documents on as had Bhutto, after India’s 1974 nuclear the event is still classified secret. test. The undisputed facts about the crash of On August 17, 1988, General Zia and the Pakistani president’s specially outfitted five of his top generals had gone to a desert Lockheed C-130 aircraft on August 17, test site to watch a demonstration of the 1988, are not many. Even some of those Abrams M-1/A-1 battle tank, which the “facts” are still in dispute and can be called United States was pressing Pakistan to buy. up to stoke suspicions of the United States General Zia’s armored battle experts were in South Asia. not enthusiastic about the tank, and the General Zia was the steadfast ally of the president was reported to be much more United States against the Soviet Union in interested in the AWACS. Nevertheless, he Afghanistan, and had willingly allowed wanted to watch the trials, and traveled to Pakistan to become the base of a holy war the test range not far from Bahawalpur, by the self-styled mujahidin against the about 330 miles south of the Pakistani capi- Moscow-backed Afghan government. Zia tal. The C-130 was left on the Bahawalpur 94 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • FALL 2005 airstrip, and the official party flew to the warriors fighting the Soviet-backed govern- test site by helicopter. With the tests over ment. This was Gulbadin Hekmatyar, per- by late morning, General Zia and his en- haps the most ruthless and self-serving of tourage returned to Bahawalpur for lunch, seven mujahidin commanders. Hekmatyar, then took off for the return trip to Islam- an evil and violent conspirator and sower of abad. Within minutes, the plane had plum- discord then and now (since he has swung meted without warning into a dusty waste- his support to the Taliban cause), was re- land and all aboard were dead. ported to be fearful that he was about to lose American money and military aid. He Conspiracy Theories had certainly offended influential officials in The wreckage of the doomed C-130 was both Pakistan and the United States. still smoldering on a barren patch of Paki- Or the Iranians? Iran, a Shiite theocracy, stan when the conspiracy theories began to looked askance at the prospect of a Sunni- mushroom. Who could have plotted the led (and pro-Pakistani) version of the same spectacular crash of Pakistan’s Air Force next door. A homegrown version of this the- One, wiping out with one blow Zia, Am- ory blamed Pakistani Shias for the attack on bassador Raphel, his defense attaché, Brig. a Sunni president. Gen. Herbert M. Wassom, and most of Could it be that dissatisfied, ambitious Pakistan’s top military commanders? elements in the Pakistani military—Shia or From the beginning, reporters were Sunni—had pulled off a coup in disguise? never short of theories to work with. One top general who did not board the Surely it had to have been the Russians, doomed aircraft became military chief of stung by their humiliating failure to sub- staff after the crash wiped out the Pakistani due the odd assortment of Afghan holy war- high command. riors who had found safe haven and generous Then, of course, there was the avowedly support in Zia’s Pakistan. Although Soviet violent anti-Zia group known as al-Zulfikar, troops had begun their withdrawal from led by the late Murtaza Bhutto, the brother Afghanistan, Moscow had just halted the of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani politician process to protest Pakistan’s continued who would ultimately gain most from Zia’s arming of rebels. departure. General’s Zia’s son Ijaz ul-Haq No, it must have been the Indians, told me a year after the crash that he was Pakistan’s traditional enemies, who were “101 percent sure” that Murtaza was friends of the Afghan Communist govern- involved. ment and very anxious about the potential Benazir Bhutto, who became prime fallout of an Islamist victory in Kabul, minister in November 1988, herself ven- which General Zia was abetting. Indian in- tured that the fatal crash might well have telligence operatives had a record of under- been an “act of God.” cover meddling in virtually every country in But wait, what about the Central Intel- South Asia, most tragically in Sri Lanka, ligence Agency? Some influential Pakistanis where Indian agents initially trained and and Indians peddled that suspicion immedi- supplied Tamil separatists who have killed a ately, on the ground that Zia had become generation of Sri Lankan political leaders. an embarrassment to the United States on What about the Afghans themselves, led several fronts, not least because of his un- by the devious and ruthless Najibullah, a certain commitment toward a more demo- former head of the secret police with a fear- cratic government and his government’s loy- ful reputation for torture? alty to extremists among the Afghan rebels, Another candidate might be found who seemed to have spun out of American among the American-backed Afghan holy control. Who Killed Zia? 95 Then, of course, maybe the aircraft just adding one more theory to the list of poten- malfunctioned. This plane had a checkered tial perpetrators. history. When General Zia’s VIP C-130 aircraft, also known as Pak One, spiraled down at Accident or Sabotage? Bahawalpur, near Multan in eastern Paki- Adding to the mystery of who or what stan, John Gunther Dean was the U.S. am- killed General Zia and fueling the “CIA did bassador in neighboring India. Dean, a dis- it” theory in South Asia was the less than tinguished diplomat who had garnered more conclusive—some would say, less than seri- ambassadorships than most envoys of his ous—investigation that took place in the generation, was also a person with strong wake of the crash. Pakistan was given the opinions drawn from years of experience lead in conducting a probe on the scene, but abroad, opinions he sharpened as he moved U.S. Defense Department and aircraft ex- from post to post. He had on numerous oc- perts were part of the investigating team. casions clashed with superiors or disagreed It was intended to be a joint investiga- with the American policies he was expected tion with a joint conclusion, yet within two to promote. He was a prickly independent months of the crash, the American govern- thinker, not a popular breed in diplomacy. ment was alone in promoting the idea, In New Delhi in August 1988, a lot without concrete material evidence, that of history came together in Dean’s mind. a mechanical malfunction had brought He had an immediate suspicion about who down the plane. Most Pakistanis didn’t see killed Zia, but his putative perpetrator was it that way. From the start, they assumed not on the list of possible conspirators then assassination. in circulation. Dean thought the plot to rid Apparently to undercut Pakistan’s con- the world of General Zia bore the hallmarks clusions on the eve of the report’s formal re- of Israel, or specifically the Israeli intelli- lease in October 1988, the mechanical mal- gence agency, Mossad. function story was leaked to the New York Dean believed in “dissent through chan- Times before rather different final results nels,” not leaks. And, knowing what a con- were presented to reporters in Islamabad. troversy such a public accusation would un- The Pakistanis declared the crash “a crimi- leash, and the effect it would have not only nal act or sabotage leading to the loss of air- in the United States and South Asia but also craft control.” in the wider Islamic world, he decided to Furthermore, although an American am- go back to Washington to explain his theory bassador and a high-ranking military officer in person to his superiors at the State De- were among the dead, the State Department partment.